Miller's Crossing - "Jesus, Tom!"

My favorite films of all time all share one quality: they can be studied deeply and have numerous theories applied to them, or you can shut your brain off and just enjoy the world of the film. And both styles of viewing are equally enjoyable. Miller’s Crossing is one of those films, making it one of my favorite Coen Brothers movies, possibly my overall favorite (I’ll post my ranking once I get to the end of their filmography in a few months). Most of the films in the Coen filmography can be viewed this way, but what sets Miller’s Crossing apart is that it almost dares you to analyze it.

“Jesus, Tom!”

The phrase “Jesus, Tom” is said eight times in the film (seven, if you’re watching the Criterion cut), along with a single utterance each for “Tom, Jesus,” and “Christ, Tom” along with countless variations of “Jesus” as an exclamation. It happens too many times to be ignored. Much like the focus on hats, it begs you to find meaning, even if the Coens don’t necessarily mean anything by it. 

For the record, I don’t buy their bullshit in interviews when they claim most of their potentially symbolic elements are just random. But I also don’t like filmmakers flat out telling audiences what things mean, so good for them. There’s probably a more solid theory to be worked out with the hats along the lines of them representing order and control. But the hat stuff never interested me that much. Tom as Jesus on the other hand…

Like most theories applied to Coen films, this isn’t clear cut or perfect by any means. This is not a one to one story of Christ. But the dialogue and Tom’s sacrifice for Leo make it worth thinking about. 

I don’t find Tom all that Christ-like beyond taking on other people’s problems and “saving” them. Instead, I like to think of Tom as Jesus if Jesus Christ was kind of a dick who didn’t give a shit. Tom is a bit of a drunken smartass asshole throughout the film, but you still root for him because he still seems better than those around him. It’s as if this world operates on a set course and only Tom’s actions can alter that course.

Tom is a selfless person, but not in a holy way. He’s self-destructive with his drinking and gambling, and though others offer to save him throughout the film, he insists on taking care of things himself, even if it means taking a beating or even dying. 

So when Leo sets a course for destruction by protecting Bernie, Tom realizes he must ruin his relationship with Leo (and Verna) to save Leo. But he doesn’t do this in a kind savior way. He’s a dick about it, because it’s annoying to him. He knows there are beatings in the future, all because Leo fell in love.

When Leo pronounced his love for Verna, Tom knew he could not salvage his friendship. First off, he’s in a relationship of his own with Verna, which is bad enough. But he also wants Leo to be happy more than he wants happiness for himself. 

You would think committing adultery would be enough to discredit a Jesus theory, but Tom is also a murderer. Killing Bernie might appear to be a cold-blooded moment of revenge for Tom, and it most likely is to a degree, but it’s also what saves Leo and Verna’s relationship. Tom knows there’s no going back to Verna after killing her brother. She’s now free to return to Leo, who Tom knew would always take her back because he’s a sap.  

Between all the supposed or real double crosses and the affair and the murder, Tom has created an untenable situation. By the time the smoke clears, his actions have led to Leo being back on top with no real threats, but he can’t be a part of it. Like Jesus, now that his mission of salvation is complete, it’s time to move on.

Obviously, it’s easy to poke holes in this theory, but it’s fun to think about it when you’ve watched a movie a dozen times and want to add new meaning to it. I still prefer to let the music of the dialogue of Miller’s Crossing wash over me (it’s really hard not to ask people “What’s the rumpus?” after watching this) rather than do the homework of counting how many times a character says “Jesus.” And the Coens would probably utterly dismiss any comparison between Jesus and Tom. But they know what they’re doing when they put that phrase in the script so many times. It’s there for humor (especially when they have Steve Buscemi say it), but they also like laying little theory traps in their movies for dorks like me, and I’ll gladly take the bait from time to time. And other times, I’ll just “let it drift.” With the Coens, both options are great.

Random Thoughts / Favorite Quotes

It is absolutely insane that Jon Polito was 38 when they filmed this. I would've guessed 50 at the youngest. In fact, Gabriel Byrne was born six months earlier than Polito, yet Polito calls him “kid” multiple times. He’s an all time young old dude.

“Youse fancy pants, all of youse.”

“Friends is a mental state.”

J. E. Freeman is giving an all-time sneering performance in this.

I always liked the Vinny Vedecci skits on SNL in which Bill Hader as Vedecci would interview celebrities for his Italian talk show but the guests don’t speak Italian. Every skit would include a moment when Vedecci’s son, played by Bobby Moynihan would interrupt, dressed in an old-timey sailor outfit. He asks a question and the guest’s response makes him cry, and Vedecci has to calm him down with cigarettes and wine. It’s random as shit, unless you’ve seen Miller’s Crossing. Johnny Caspar’s son first appears in a sailor outfit, and later in the film Caspar hits him, causing him to have a crying fit (though he doesn’t give him a cigarette or wine). Hader, a known cinephile, clearly decided to pay homage to Caspar’s son in the Vedecci skit. He’s never acknowledged it in any interview that I could find, though Moynihan’s Wikipedia page states that the character is based on Caspar’s son, but there isn’t a citation for this. Either way, I think it’s pretty clear that this is the source of the SNL character. It’s just one of those great, random things Hader injected into his comedy.

Mike Starr really looks like his feelings are hurt after Tom hits him with the chair. His “Jesus, Tom,” is the best in the film, and it’s crazy that the Coens cut it out of the Criterion version of the film. I’m fine, I guess, with them “tightening things up” or whatever with these releases, but cutting that line baffles me.

“You got a lip on you. That’s all right. I don’t generally care for it. But that’s all right.”

“I forgive you.”

“I didn’t ask for that, and I don’t want it.”

This film presents the violence of gangster films so commonplace that it’s comedic. First, characters just treat it as part of the life, as evidenced by Tom and O’Doyle’s reaction to gunfire erupting during the raid on Caspar’s club. They don’t duck and cover; they just shrug it off as the typical bullshit you deal with in this world. 

Then there’s the attempted hit on Leo, in which he’s granted infinite ammo when he retaliates. If the amount of ammo wasn’t a clear indicator of the humor, then the way the goon dies in the window should solidify it as he goes all herky-jerky and shoots a complete circle around himself (including his own toes). And there’s the Sam Raimi cameo with the twitching body and the ridiculous firepower in that scene which rivals something out of a Naked Gun movie. 

The treatment of violence in Miller’s Crossing as both brutal and comic is one of the many reasons why I love it. The Coens have this rare ability to ride this line between sincere gangster noir and a parody of it. It’s a bit of having your cake and eating it, too, but why the fuck shouldn’t you eat cake if you have it? That saying is stupid as shit, as is the criticism it implies.

Blood Simple - The Best DVD Commentary of All Time

Blank Check with Griffin & David recently started their series on the Coen Brothers, so I’ve decided to write something about every movie as I follow the podcast (except for the ones I’ve previously written about: Raising Arizona, No Country for Old Men, A Serious Man, True Grit, and Inside Llewyn Davis [unless some kind of inspiration strikes upon a rewatch]). First up is their debut film, Blood Simple.

I’ve always liked Blood Simple, but it wasn’t the first Coen Brothers movie I watched, so my expectations were a bit too high. It’s darkly comic and features plenty of their hallmarks, but when you start with Raising Arizona, Miller’s Crossing, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, etc., and then check out Blood Simple, it can be a little underwhelming. Years removed from all that, I can start to appreciate this movie a bit more. But this time around, it was the DVD release that I own that interested me the most. 

When Blood Simple debuted on DVD in the early 2000s, it was a director’s cut of the film. The Coens went back and tightened things up (making this one of the rare shorter director’s cuts), and replaced a Neil Diamond song with their original choice of “It’s the Same Old Song” by The Four Tops. None of this mattered to me because I’ve never seen the theatrical cut (they did something similar with Miller’s Crossing, but that time it did annoy me, but I’ll get to that in a couple weeks). But they released this director’s cut at the height of cinephiles being annoyed with directors changing their movies, most notably George Lucas’s Star Wars Special Editions and Spielberg editing the guns out of E.T. I bring this up because the DVD release features a couple very strange elements that seem to be directly addressing the decision to tweak the film. 

The movie begins with an introduction from the owner of the fictitious Forever Young Films, describing how modern technology has allowed the film to be updated by taking out the “boring parts” and upgrading the audio using the “Lucas method.” This apparently played theatrically before the film when it was re-released, as well. It’s a little tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement that they, like the name-checked Lucas, have gone back and messed with their film with modern technology and years of experience to present their original vision. 

That would be plenty enough of a little in-joke for film fans, but for the DVD they added one much more ambitious bit of fuckery: a commentary track from Kenneth Loring (Jim Piddock) of Forever Young Films. The introduction was just a couple minutes long, but this commentary goes the entire film, and Piddock never breaks character. And, according to the few sites I could find that discuss the commentary, the Coens actually wrote the entire track. The dedication to the joke is funny in itself, but the commentary features plenty of legitimately funny nonsense.

I’m not going to transcribe this thing or anything (especially since there are a number of other articles that have already summarized most of it), but I did want to point out my favorite moments. Easily my favorite part is the claim that a fly was digitally created for a scene, but since it was 1984, it took so much computer power that it overloaded the mainframe and shut off power to the city for two days. The power outage also deleted months of work on the fly, which led one animator to commit suicide. Loring also claims that a dog is actually an animatronic. The opening scene in the car was filmed backwards and upside down. Fred Astaire was approached to be a body double. There was an entire Bulgarian subplot cut from the original film. Loring has an ongoing feud with someone named Adrian Butts, and he once had a bit of a run-in with Nick Nolte. Just a ton of utter bullshit that does that magical thing in comedy of being funny, then being tiresome, then becoming funny again. 

The commentary is funny for its absurdity alone, but it’s also amusing as a satire on commentary tracks. As a dork who has listened to far too many of these things, I appreciated that Loring over-explained most scenes to the point that he would just describe what was happening on screen, which is something surprisingly common on these tracks. It’s a great example of how silly and pretentious a lot of these tracks can be. Of course, I am a fan of filmmakers and others over-discussing a film, but I can appreciate the comedy of this fake track and acknowledge that a lot of commentary tracks are filled with pointless bullshit. One could argue that a movie should just be watched, and a commentary track is a needless distraction. 

That’s why it’s my favorite commentary track of all time, even besting Schwarzenegger's track on Conan the Barbarian (“I’m just getting laid a lot in this movie. It’s amazing.”) and Affleck’s savagely honest track for Armageddon. It’s the best kind of spoof: it’s funny on its own and as a…uh…commentary on commentaries. 

It’s also interesting in what it says about the Coen Brothers. They clearly felt self conscious enough about tweaking their film with that fake intro. But to go to the trouble of writing a whole fake commentary shows that they find navel-gazing and revisiting old work to be a little ridiculous, even if they were doing it themselves. It’s the kind of self-deprecation I love: you acknowledge your faults as an excuse to indulge in them. Of course, I can’t find any real evidence that they actually wrote the whole commentary, and it’s probably likely that Piddock was allowed to improvise a lot of it. So perhaps it was more of a silly afterthought for them to include on the DVD rather than a real statement about any of this kind of stuff. But it is odd that there has never been a real acknowledgement of this track aside from sites like mine posting about it. 

It wasn’t included on the Criterion release, either, which is why, I assume, that Griffin from Blank Check failed to mention it on their episode about Blood Simple because he bought the Criterion release rather than the old DVD. I’m not sure why it wasn’t included. I suppose it could be some kind of rights issue, but typically the old supplemental materials carry over onto Criterion editions, so I wonder if the Coens didn’t want it on there. Unfortunately, there are a lot of unanswered questions with this commentary, but that doesn’t take away from how fun it is. 

At the very least, the fake commentary on Blood Simple’s original DVD release is another example of why physical media is vital. Weird little special features like that are becoming more and more rare as the physical media landscape leans more into specialty releases. So it’s nice to have a copy on hand to revisit from time to time to get a few laughs and think about how ashamed the Coens were to go back and use the “Lucas method” on their first film.

Superman - "Metahumans Kill Thing"

Superman should be a simple character, but over time multiple interpretations have left things a bit contentious (existing for nearly ninety years will do that to a character). Whether it’s fans of previous incarnations or people who find the character “woke,” there are plenty of haters out there for a character who is typically considered so good that he’s boring. I find all this hand-wringing over what the character is “supposed” to be pretty fucking stupid.

I simply don’t care that much about Superman. It doesn’t matter to me if his immigrant status is front and center (to be clear, at least in the movies, he’s always been an alien). I don’t care if he’s goofier than the last version. I don’t care if he gets his ass kicked (something else that happens in all the other versions, too, by the way [he even died a couple movies ago!]). I’ve been fine with every cinematic version of him so far, and this current one might be my favorite.

I’m not well-versed enough in the comics to claim to know what a Superman movie should be, but James Gunn’s Superman is certainly the kind of movie I want for this character. I’ve watched nearly every comic book movie released in the last forty years, and this is one of the few that brought me pure joy. I found myself simply smiling throughout most of the film. I can find something to appreciate in all the modern versions of Superman. Donner’s is the traditional approach, Lester’s is there for some silly bullshit, Singer’s has the nostalgia factor (and it’s great to put on when I have trouble sleeping), and Snyder’s is more of a tortured god. I enjoy all of these to some degree, but Gunn’s is the first one that puts me in a good mood.

This isn’t just because of David Corenswet’s portrayal of Superman, though I thought he was great at presenting a powerful but vulnerable version of the character. It’s more to do with the world Gunn created. First off, it’s silly. Superman has a dog. He has goofy robot helpers. Second, and most importantly, this is a world that is so used to superheroes and monsters that no one seems too concerned when an interdimensional monster shows up. Sure, they run away and evacuate at times, but you get the feeling that this stuff is as common as bad weather. 

At the beginning of the film, we’re told that metahumans and monsters first started showing up three hundred years ago. Because of this, Superman’s appearance isn’t as big of a deal as it is in other incarnations. There’s no fear about what his existence will mean to mankind. He’s just another in a long line of super-powered beings, even though he is one of the most powerful. This solves a big problem I have with comic book movies of late: seriousness. It’s increasingly hard to care about the potential end of the world when it happens in every movie, and some hero or team of heroes saves the day every time. So it’s nice to have a movie in which everyone in it is like the audience: they’re used to this shit, so there’s no need to freak out or get too dark and serious about it.

Two of my favorite moments in the film involve giant beasts attacking Metropolis. The first one I enjoyed because of the news headline at the end that simply states: Metahumans Kill Thing. This shit is so common they don’t even bother to try to name these things anymore. Also, that fight shows how strong Superman is because he is holding back in the fight, hoping to find a way to incapacitate the monster and maybe find an “intergalactic zoo” they can relocate it to. He rightfully gets made fun of for this, but it’s nice that he isn’t in a hurry to kill something, even if it’s a monster. 

The second moment happens completely in the background. While a dejected Superman talks with Lois, the Justice Gang (I’m a fan of the name) battles a tentacled monster in the background. This shows that Superman isn’t the sole protector of this world, it provides some beautiful background imagery for a dialogue scene (I was reminded of the weird performance going on in Revenge of the Sith when Palpatine tells Anakin about Darth Plagueis), and it solidifies how normal this sort of thing is in this world. 

We all know Superman’s origin. Most of us know who Green Lantern is. The more obscure stuff like Krypto, Mr. Terrific, and Hawkgirl is easily accepted and understood in this setting. All of this would take up entire films in the past with set-ups in post-credits scenes and whatnot. But we either know all this stuff or can easily pick up on it, so why bother wasting time on it? Instead of getting a mid-credits stinger introducing Mr. Terrific, he’s just here, fully established. So instead of a hint, we can get arguably the film’s best action sequence with him and his awesome T-spheres. 

The economy of the film’s run time is great, but if anything, it’s too efficient. My only complaint is that I wanted more time with nearly every character. A few more newsroom scenes would have been great, but I also appreciate a fast moving film, especially since I took my six-year-old son with me, and the less dialogue the better for him. But if the biggest problem I have with a comic book movie is that it’s too short, then it’s something special.

Clearly, I’m a fan of James Gunn’s Superman. Time will tell if it holds up as one of, if not my favorite film in the series. Right now I’m riding on the high of the good vibes of the film (especially with that “Punkrocker” ending montage), but those will go away eventually, and I’ll see how I feel after a rewatch. I’m confident it will hold up. With most of the other Superman films, I need to be in a particular mood to watch them. With this one, I think it’ll be a movie I watch when I want to be put into a good mood. Maybe that’s not what a Superman movie is “supposed” to do, but it feels pretty good to me.